John Chinaman on the Rand

by Anonymous

It would of course be very interesting to know how many of these fines have ever reached the Colonial Treasury. Armed with such extraordinary powers as these, it is highly probable that the Rand lords imposed through their superintendents and inspectors unlimited fines which, instead of benefiting the Colonial Revenue, merely reduced the wage bill.

The last clause which I have quoted contains the phrase "organizing a conspiracy." A conspiracy, of course, is anything in the nature of a trade union.

I don't say that this new Ordinance was not justified. I think it was fully justified. No efficiency can be obtained by half measures. The ablest political trimmers are incapable of serving both God and Mammon. If God is out of the question, a whole-hearted worship of Mammon is really better. In short, it would have been far more in the interests of the Transvaal if the Rand lords had from the first gone the whole hog and insisted on having Chinese slaves in name as well as in fact.

The state of affairs in August last wanted extraordinary legislation. But, of course, this must not be held to justify Chinese labour. That was criminal. But once the principle of Chinese labour had been accepted by the Government on behalf of an unwilling and protesting nation, I fail to see how the unfortunate remnants of British subjects in the Transvaal could be properly protected without these measures. I don't see how, when once the Chinese had been brought into the country, the brutalities that have been committed could have been avoided. I think the superintendent and the inspector and the overseer should have the right to shoot men down in cold blood. I think the compounds should be surrounded by artillery. I think all the ideals of Russian autocratic rule should be brought to bear upon these men. The awful brutality with which they have been treated is justified. The superintendent, the inspector and the overseer should be forced to make a special study of the methods adopted by Hawkins and Magree. The British Government wanted Chinese labour to be introduced into the Transvaal, and if they had been efficient and sensible they should have accumulated in their Ordinance the wisdom of all the slave-owning traditions of centuries.

But from an unbiassed perusal of the Rand press one would have imagined that all these extraordinary measures were unjustified.

The statements that the Chinese were committing outrages, were insolent, were bestial, which have from time to time appeared in the British press, were referred to by the Rand press as "more Chinese lies," "Chinese canards," and such headings. They persistently impressed upon their readers that the Chinese were leading an industrious, idyllic life, that they were treated with kindness and humanity by the overseers, that no happier community ever existed on the face of the earth than the 40,000 odd Chinamen in their compounds on the Rand.

Of course, they only kept up this pretence for a time. It was impossible for long to pretend to be a newspaper at all and yet deny facts which were personally known to the majority of their readers.

The object of this extraordinary legislation was, of course, that the Chinese preferred to go to prison rather than pay fines.

At the beginning of August there were more than one thousand Chinamen in jail undergoing various terms of imprisonment, rather than deduct from their shilling a day, the amounts they were called upon to pay for disobeying the laws laid down in the Ordinance.